Leonie Health, a Public Benefit Corporation, has developed the first line of bioactive human milk products formulated to match the composition of colostrum.

Colostrum is fundamentally different from mature milk—it's a concentrated biological starter kit produced during the first 48-72 hours postpartum. We've solved a critical challenge in neonatal care: delivering this bioactive nutrition, as nature intended—for infants who cannot access their mother's colostrum during the critical first days of life. Human milk is nature's most sophisticated nutritional formulation—a concentrated bioactive solution designed specifically for newborn immune and gut development. The first 72 hours after an infant is born is the critical window when colostrum provides the nutritional foundation for immune and gut development that influences health throughout life. 

Why this is important for Preterm Infants:

• 70%+ of preterm mothers cannot provide sufficient colostrum 

• 355,000 infants annually are admitted to NICUs requiring specialized nutrition

• 20-25% develop serious infections associated with inadequate early immune support

Why this is important for Full-Term Infants:

• 46% receive formula in the first 72 hours, displacing colostrum feeding

• Infants with limited early colostrum access show 4x higher incidence of peanut allergy, 11x higher incidence of multiple food allergies by 12-18 months

• 1.69 million infants annually miss the critical bioactive nutrition window

• Alternatives to mother’s own milk include donor milk from breastmilk banks but pasteurization is shown to destroy up to 80% of the bioactive nutrients. Leonie Health's proprietary non-thermal processing preserves these components at levels comparable to fresh maternal colostrum. We've achieved what the infant nutrition field has been missing: bioactive nutrition products from nature's most sophisticated nutritional formulation - human milk.

  The Result: Stage-specific infant nutritional products that support immune system development, gut maturation, and optimal growth. The Leonie Health product line is designed to evoke a fundamental shift in how we approach infant nutrition: not simply as calories and macronutrients, but as a sophisticated biological system that establishes the foundation for lifelong health. At the heart of our innovation is stage-appropriate access to bioactive colostrum—the extraordinary first milk that nature designed to launch human development. Colostrum delivers an irreplaceable matrix of functional components that work in concert. The functional components of colostrum include:

  • Immunoglobulins – Antibodies that provide passive immunity and protect the developing gut

  • Growth Factors – Bioactive proteins including IGF-1 and EGF that stimulate cellular growth and intestinal maturation

  • Cytokines – Immune-modulating compounds that program healthy inflammatory responses

  • Lactoferrin – A multifunctional protein with antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and iron-binding properties

  • Oligosaccharides – Complex prebiotic sugars that shape the infant microbiome and prevent pathogen binding

  • Enzymes – Digestive and antimicrobial enzymes including lysozyme and lipase

  By delivering these components when they're needed most—in the first days of life, and in the proportions that mirror maternal biology—we're not just feeding infants. We're supporting immune education, gut maturation, metabolic programming, and neurodevelopment during the most critical window of human life.